45 posts categorized "Culture"

Hey Rioters, can you believe it’s almost March!? We can’t – this year has been flying by, but we’re not complaining :) Just like you we’re dreaming of longer, sunnier days, warmer weather (anything above 30 degrees please!) and breaking out of any Wintery slumps. As February comes to an end, sweetriot is also starting to look forward to some awesome events in March, but also celebrating the last few days of our projects this month!

Sweet Reminiscing:

B the Better Lunch Break Campaign: Our competition ends in just a few days! sweetriot, and a ton of other B-Corporations, including Preserve, Mama Chia, Lotus Foods and Bean Better Co., have joined Hilary Eat's Well to help you upgrade your lunch in a healthy way. We’re offering fair trade prizes from all of these B-Corps on our social media pages this week. If you don’t want to miss out on all the goodies, head to the contest page here and like and follow sweetriot on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. We’ll be posting weekly updates to give you more chances to win awesome freebies and a grand prize package featuring B-corp certified products.

Eco Emi’s February Box: If you haven’t already, check out Eco Emi’s February Box featuring sweetriot Yummies along with other awesome natural and organic products. Eco Emi sends monthly boxes filled with eco-friendly, natural products. Living green can positively affect every aspect of your life whether mentally, socially or physically. sweetriot supports a healthier, greener lifestyle just like Eco Emi, which is why we love providing you with our clean treats!

Looking Ahead:

Globein: We’re so excited to begin our partnership with GlobeIn and even more excited that our Cacao Nibs will be featured in one of the company’s March boxes! Each month, GlobeIn puts together themed artisan boxes with products from all around the world. You can have them delivered to your door for less than $30 a month. Even better, all of the products are fair trade, support artisans and farmers, and are handmade with care. Be sure to sign up before mid-March to ensure you receive a sweetriot treat in your box :) We can’t wait to see what other goodies they’ll be sending with sweetriot’s chocolate!

Finally, don’t forget to sign up for our sweetriot e-newsletter to get more updates on what we’re up to in March! We’re sure there will be plenty more yummy things to come :)

Right before Thanksgiving, sweetriot paired with New York University’s human rights journal Humanus to raise awareness about fair trade chocolate! And we want to encourage you to do something similar with your university, club or organization. Here’s how:

1) Find a group that’s interested in the fair trade cause. Even if you don’t have a human rights journal like NYU, look for other options like an environmental, political or even food-related group! These can be on or off campus. Still can’t think of one? Round up some friends who are interested in the cause and set a date!

2) Write up a pamphlet on fair trade or create an information sign. We handed out one-sided pamphlets with some quick facts about the benefits of buying fair trade and sweetriot’s contact information. We also had a poster with more information about Humanus and the importance of participating in human rights campaigns, but you can tailor your poster to whatever group you’re a part of. You can find resources on www.fairtradeusa.org.

3) Buy your chocolate from sweetriot! Whether it’s riotBars, nibs, squares or yummies, people will be a lot more interesting in learning about fair trade if they get a sweet treat in return. Healthy chocolate can sound too good to be true, so hand out some samples to show just how delicious being ethical can be (pretty freaking delicious).

It’s that easy! With a few hours and a little chocolate, anyone can start a riot for the hundreds of cacao farmers trying to improve their lives in South America. Don’t forget to give us a shout out on social media about your event - we’ll share your content and enter you in our weekly Instagram contest! Happy rioting :)

Halloween is less than two weeks away and that means lots of candy and (our favorite) chocolate! We’re super excited to see all of our rioters posting photos of their spooky costumes and decorations for the holiday, but we’re also hoping you’ll help us send an important message to all the trick-or-treaters running around this year. Here’s how you can help!

Chocolate comes from the cacao bean. If you’re like us and you love chocolate, you probably also love the awesome cacao farmers that supply it for all the chocoholics in the world. Unfortunately, though, cacao farmers can be cheated out of profits when they sell their harvests to middlemen who rig scales and give farmers false information about prices. On average, cacao farmers earn less than $2 a day. That’s less than a third of the United States’ hourly minimum wage! We’ve put up a couple other fair trade product profiles on our blog this month that talk about a similar issue: When we don’t buy fair trade, we’re hurting the individuals who truly deserve the profit for their products. Whether it’s coffee, sugar, cacao or some other good, these farmers have their families and themselves to support. With a stable income they can provide better educations and lifestyles for their children, which will dramatically improve their communities in the long term.

But there’s another serious issue going on in the chocolate industry: child labor. Particularly in Western Africa, which produces more than 70% of the world’s cacao, the use of child labor and slavery isn’t uncommon. Children in this area must begin working at a young age to support their families. Many are lured onto cacao farms by traffickers while others are forcefully sold. Mostly they are between the ages of 12 and 16, but some are as young as 5 when they begin farming. These children aren’t always given a choice, but you are. Not only do you fight against child labor and enslavement when you buy fair trade chocolate, but you also send a powerful message to the children you give that chocolate to this Halloween. Giving fair trade treats to your neighborhood children helps children on the other side of the globe have a brighter future—one without slavery or forced labor. And that’s a sweet deal for everyone!

There’s still plenty of time to purchase fair trade chocolate and candy for Halloween this year, and for all of the Halloweens to come. Make it your mission to not only help the farmers and children harvesting the cacao, but also to spread the message to future generations about the incredible impact fair trade relations can have on our world. It starts with you, this Halloween, and ends with a better tomorrow for the children, both here and thousands of miles away.

As I’m sure our Rioters have noticed, sweetriot is pretty crazy about cacao, but our coffee addiction is definitely a close second. From dark roasts to pumpkin spice lattes, we need our caffeine to get us through the day. That being said, we care a whole lot about where our coffee comes from, and we hold it to the same standards we do our chocolate!

Have you ever considered where your coffee started out? Farmers from countries all over the world harvest coffee beans and sell them to importers. But sometimes these farmers are tricked into selling their beans to middlemen for much less than they’re worth. By buying fair trade coffee, you’re supporting hardworking farmers, ensuring they get the money they deserve. Fair trade gives farmers an honest price for their harvest and connects them directly with importers. As a result, farmers receive higher incomes and can properly maintain their land to produce quality product.

In celebration of Fair Trade Month, sweetriot is asking our Rioters to buy fair trade products. That might mean walking the extra block to reach a fair trade coffee shop in the morning, but we promise the trek is worthwhile. Check out fairtradeusa.org for a list of fair trade coffee companies and products, because equitable coffee is more joyful, more delicious, and filled with more good vibes!

If you’re a long-time Rioter, then you know how excited sweetriot is about promoting our rocking artists! Every few months, we ask our Rioters to vote for an emerging artist to share his or her work on our upcoming packaging. But we don’t want our support for these amazing artists to end at a riotBar or Nib Tin, so we’ve put together a list of some of our past featured artists! Instead of sharing the same artwork we used for our riotBars and tins, we want to show you some other pieces these talented individuals have created (and to share their blogs and online stores with you). Don’t forget to click their names to be linked to more of their work :) !

Lindy Gaskill has been a fan of abstract and expressionist artwork since she was a little girl, and it inspired her to pursue her own creativity. After traveling around the world, including nine countries and a number of states, Gaskill used her cultural experiences to develop her unique artistic style.

Enchanted Hummingbirds

Ira L. Black is a New York based photographer, with a focus in digital photography. Black has shot portraits for individuals including anyone from His Holiness The Dalai Lama to Hillary Clinton to Jay Sean. He’s also showcased his fine art photography, like the image below, around the states.

Abstractions

Rebecca Case loves the wild, especially when she gets to paint and photograph it. Inspired by her move from Colorado to Michigan, Case takes advantage of the woodsy areas near her home to create her art.

Paph Orchid in Egg Tempra

Sheena Sood studied textile design and visual art in college, and has since launched her own (super cute) clothing collection called abacaxi. Abacaxi has a unique tropical feel that triggers images of the sun, surf and island wildlife with an urban twist.

The Adeline Dress

Callie Hirsch first became inspired during a scuba diving trip with her father and family friend Dick Strauss, an underwater photographer. Since, Hirsch has been fascinated by sea life, and uses different art mediums to reproduce images of the fascinating creatures she researches.

Fish Food

Gabriele Stewart was born and educated in Switzerland, but now lives in the United States with her husband and three children. Stewart focuses on acrylic and mixed media paintings that explore the tension between control and commotion through abstract visuals.

Riot

After she received her degree in fine art at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Maggie Hernandez remained in New York City to work. Her abstract paintings capture untamed emotion by using strong color and movement.

Rodeo Roundup

Patty West Elstrott is a New Orleans contemporary artist whose paintings focus on scale and subject matter in a literal and ambiguous way. Elstrott is interested in adapting the physical world, making the invisible become visible.

Living Impulses

Thomas Fedro lives right outside of Chicago in Arlington Heights, Illinois where he creates abstract art with “zing.” His large paintings embody deep colors and bold lines that represent the modern world in a playful, poppy way.

Accent

Jelene Morris works from her home studio creating everything from clay sculptures to canvas paintings. She makes smaller paintings, which she calls “minipop” series, but also paintings as large as six feet in length!

Poptoons and Nightmare Series

Mike Hammer’s abstract canvas paintings aren’t very easy to describe. Hammer likes to focus on “things,” meaning material objects, in a quirky way using a mix of colors and a minimalist approach.

I had a chance to go to the East Austin Studio Tour while in Austin. If you enjoy art, East Austin is worth a visit as there is a growing artist's community there. I saw my friend Jessica's artist, Michael Merck, who was a lovely host . You can see his art in this photo.

The sweetriot art vote is live!! Things are heating up in the vote between the beautiful art of Jill and Rita, so please vote today. Decide which art you want to see on your next round of collectible, reusable sweetriot tins. Voting ends December 8, so don't delay!

It's Fashion Week in NYC and it wouldn't be the same without supporting Nicole Romano's work. She had a showcase for her Spring Collection with models on 'display' for her entire event. Nicole's fashion 'art' as I think of it was better than ever, and the crowd happily enjoyed sweetriot during the show.

The original cast of Rent is back for a limited run! Courtney, our fantastic NYU rioting senior, came back to work this week after a summer of many fantastic things, and we went to see one of our favorite shows. Needless to say, it was as good as ever, and the audience was so excited.

Courtney and I didn't realize that we would have an after performance too. Imagine the Broadway version of those bonus tracks you receive on movie DVDs. The cast comes out and you have a chance to speak with them. This time we had sweetriot standing by and the reaction was amazing. Tamyra Gray of American Idol fame had already purchased sweetriot at Whole Foods and was a cacao/dark chocolate fanatic. The rest of the Rent team was so excited to receive dark chocolate after a hard day's work. All and all Courtney and I had quite a memorable experience.